How To Fix iPhone / iPad Stuck in Recovery Loop After iOS 6 Upgrade ~ Discount Tablets Review

Friday, November 23, 2012

How To Fix iPhone / iPad Stuck in Recovery Loop After iOS 6 Upgrade

8:06 PM No comments

One thing I always love to do here at Tablet Crunch is basically log issues that people are having with their mobile devices, and then write out the solutions I’ve been able to provide. The solutions I’ve provided in the past, according to readers here at Tablet Crunch, have helped them get out of some nasty situations with their iPhones, iPads, or other mobile devices.

Don’t be fooled – Apple support isn’t always going to be your best, most efficient path to getting your problems fixed.

Well, I’m currently in the process of helping one of my friends who’s stuck in a recovery loop with their iPhone after they attempted to upgrade their iPhone 4 to iOS 6.

They have been trying to restore their iPhone because it’s stuck in a state where all you see is the charger cable pointing to the iTunes logo – which is basically the recovery mode and looks like this:

The problem is, every time my friend tried to restore their iPhone in iTunes (yes, they were able to see their iPhone under devices) they would wait like 2 hours for the restore only to be met with a message that once again was prompting them to restore.

This is what I’m calling an “iPhone restore loop”. Basically, the iPhone won’t break out of this loop of getting dragged back in to a state of waiting to be restored.

Here’s the instructions that have worked previously to break the iPhone (or iPad) out of the restore loop:

1) Ensure your iPhone is connected to your computer and iTunes is open

2) Press and hold your home button (circle button on the bottom) and your on / off button at the top of your iPhone – press and hold both together for 10 seconds — your iPhone should progress to a state where it appears to be completely off

3) Now release the on / off bottom at the top of your iPhone WHILE STILL HOLDING DOWN YOUR HOME BUTTON FOR ANOTHER 10 SECONDS

I capitalized all of this because this is usually where people go astray – you must ensure that you only release the on / off button after 10 seconds and continue holding down the home button.

4) Now keep your eye on iTunes on your computer — keep your home button pressed until you see a message in your iTunes that says “iTunes has detected an iPhone in recovery mode….”

* you did everything right if your iPhone continues to look like it’s completely off. If you see anything appear on your iPhone, then you did not do it right > read thru the steps and try again until you get the “iTunes has detected….” message while your iPhone remains off

5) Now proceed with the restore on iTunes

**** As a final note, if the above process fails, then you have a couple options:

a) continue to repeat the restore process continuously. I’ve read many forums where people have restarted the restore multiple times and after the third or fourth attempt, then it took and went through.

b) at this point, I would say you have no other choice other than pursuing Apple support – or digging into much more complicated fixes in iPhone or iPad help forums and fishing for a fix.

Let me know if this worked for you…